When I was boy, my father explained free will and predestination to me:

I dig a fence post hole.
· Did I create the hole because of my own free will?
· Or was the hole already there and I simply removed the dirt? If true, the hole was predestined.

The question cannot be answered by examining the evidence. In philosophy terms, it is “empirically unanswerable.” That is the sort of stuff that philosophers debate. Religious people might point to scripture to support one conclusion over the other.

11 Responses to Whether or not man has free will, quantum mechanics means that nature does

Baylor professor of electrical and computer engineering. And before EE departments added the embellishment “computer engineering” to jerk back some prestige from computer science departments in the late ’80’s, professor of electrical engineering.

Just for the edification of UD readers, I link a page from the Baylor website. quote:

Since Dr. Marks is heavily involved in information theory and statistics in his work, the key area from the above which fits his interests is the Signals and Systems area which is the prerequisite of statistical communications from which information theory was birthed in the late 1930’s. Computer engineering is obviously related but the mathematics for signals and systems is not in the core computer engineering curriculum. Students specializing in computer engineering are not required to study signals and systems at many schools, e.g. the two I attended. It is possible for a computer engineer to work an entire career without employing higher mathematics necessary in other engineering disciplines like statistical communications.

QM exhibiting “true” randomness may however only be the way how we interpret it. Admitting for a second that the Universe has indeed been designed, the Designer may possibly have control over every individual photon there is. Then He can guide those photons to behave in pseudo-random ways, which would be looking perfectly random to us.

..Imagine He could control individual gamma quanta, which are hitting our DNA all the time. This would make for a perfect “random” mutation “editing” of the DNA, and no living creature would ever notice the occasional “non-randomness” of this process.

“Free will” is a primary, even defining, property of an immaterial mind. Thus for Dr. Marks to say that “Nature has free will” is to falsely attribute a primary property of an immaterial mind to “Nature”.,,, In fact, for someone to say “Nature has free will” is to, in effect, say that “Nature is a person”.

I’m sure that is hardly a position that Dr. Marks, a Christian, is really trying to convey.

It would be much better for him say that quantum mechanics validates the reality of the free will of the immaterial mind and falsifies the ‘classical’ Newtonian view that nature is deterministic, than for him to say “Nature has free will”. For him to say “Nature has free will” is to create needless confusion between the agent causality that belongs only to a immaterial mind and ‘mindless’ nature.

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism – Paul Nelson – September 24, 2014
Excerpt: “Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds.
MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed (the illusion of) you of that event after the fact.
“That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer?
Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,,
You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent.,,,
some feature of “intelligence” must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we’re back to physics versus physics, and there’s nothing for SETI to look for.”,,,http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....90071.html

The second major mistake that Dr. Marks makes, besides attributing agent causality to nature, is for him to say that quantum wave collapse has no underlying cause.

“The bottom line of Bell’s theorem is that the collapse of the quantum state creates new information. There is no underlying cause of the result.”

Yet for him to say that we can have an “effect”, in this case quantum wave collapse, without a ‘sufficient cause’ is to abandon science altogether. (i.e. If to the question of “Why did the effect of x happen?” our answer is “There is no cause for why the effect of x happened.” then we are certainly not doing science.)

Moreover, when we reason back to the necessary “sufficient cause” for the “effect” of quantum wave collapse we find out many interesting things.

Specifically, prior to collapse, the wave function is mathematically defined as existing in a “infinite dimensional-infinite information” state:

Wave function
Excerpt “wave functions form an abstract vector space”,,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.....ctor_space

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960
Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space,http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc.....igner.html

Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh
Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (quantum) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1)http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/fa.....lPSA2K.pdf

Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia
Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,,http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....tcomp/#2.1

Thus, in order to stay ‘scientific’, (i.e. every effect must have a sufficient cause,) and in order to adequately explain the effect of quantum wave collapse, we must appeal to a ‘sufficient cause’ that is in itself infinite dimensional, i.e. is omnipresent, in its foundational nature, as well as appealing to a ‘sufficient cause’ that possesses infinite information, i.e. is omniscient, in its foundational nature.

In other words, in order to adequately explain the effect of quantum wave collapse we must appeal to God as the ‘sufficient cause’ for the effect that we are seeing with quantum wave collapse:

Jeremiah 23:23-24
“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away?” “Can a man hide in secret places where I cannot see him?” declares the LORD. “Do I not fill the heavens and earth?” declares the LORD.…

Psalm 147:5
Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; his understanding is infinite.

The God Of The Bible Is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient
Excerpt: Psalm 139:7-10: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.”
Jeremiah 23:24: “Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him?” declares the Lord. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord.
1 Kings 8:27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!”
Prov. 15:3: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, Watching the evil and the good.”
,,,
Psalm 147:5 “Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.”
Psalm 139:1-6 “O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.”
1 Jn.3:18-20 “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”,,,,https://www.thebridgeonline.net/sermons/the-god-of-the-bible-is-omnipresent-omnipotent-and-omniscient/

I think what Dr. Marks meant is “contingence”. Contingency is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for free will.

The fact that nature exhibits contingency means free will is possible. If nature were completely deterministic as described by Newton, then free will would not be impossible, but would seem more implausible to people.

Another mistake that Dr. Marks made, apparently via Penrose, is that he assumes that Quantum wave collapse is happening within the brain:

“Sir Roger Penrose believes that human nonalgorithmic (noncomputable) characteristics such as creativity are due to quantum collapse in the brain’s microtubules. If he is correct, truly fresh new information is being created in our brains. But there’s a problem. The bits of information generated by quantum collapse are merely random. That is, they are uselessly random.”

Yet, what has been demonstrated in microtubules is not quantum wave collapse but is quantum entanglement and/or quantum coherence.

New Study Favors Quantum Mind – Quantum coherence in brain protein resembles plant photosynthesis – 18-Sep-2014
Excerpt: Photosynthesis, the ubiquitous and essential mechanism by which plants produce food from sunlight, has been shown since 2006 to routinely utilize quantum coherence (quantum coherent superposition) at warm temperatures.,,,
Back in the brain, microtubules are components of the cytoskeleton inside neurons, cylindrical lattice polymers of the protein ‘tubulin’.,,, now it appears quantum mechanisms eerily similar to those in photosynthesis may operate in tubulins within microtubules.
In an article published September 17,, a team of scientists,, used computer simulation and theoretical quantum biophysics to analyze quantum coherence among tryptophan pi resonance rings in tubulin, the component protein in microtubules.,,,
(They) mapped locations of the tryptophan pi electron resonance clouds in tubulin, and found them analogous to (the quantum coherent superposition of) chromophores in photosynthesis proteins.,,,http://www.newswise.com/articl.....sone_share

Physicists find quantum coherence and quantum entanglement are two sides of the same coin
June 25, 2015
Excerpt: It’s well-known that quantum coherence and quantum entanglement are both rooted in the superposition principle—the phenomenon in which a single quantum state simultaneously consists of multiple states—but in different ways.https://phys.org/news/2015-06-physicists-quantum-coherence-entanglement-sides.html

In fact, it is now thought anesthetics act to erase consciousness by ‘disrupting’ the ‘quantum vibrations’ of microtubules. Or, (if I may stretch the evidence a bit), by ‘disrupting’ the quantum coherence of microtubules.

Thus for consciousness itself to exist in the brain then, contrary to what Dr. Marks, (via Penrose), believes, consciousness itself requires that the quantum coherence of the microtubules themselves to remain in an ‘uncollapsed’ state.

In fact, a major difference between a ‘sleeping brain’ and a brain that is awake is the amount of ‘long range coherence’ that is detected in the brain:

Researchers: Deep sleep short-circuits brain’s grid of connectivity – September 29, 2005
Excerpt: Tononi and his team observed the disconnect when brief, magnetically generated pulses of electricity were directed to specific regions of the brain. The pulses stimulated an electrochemical response from the targeted cells, which, when the subject was awake, rippled across the brain, traveling along networks of nerve fibers to different cerebral destinations. But when the subject was in deep sleep, the same response was quickly extinguished and did not travel beyond the stimulated cells.
When consciousness fades, according to Tononi, “the brain breaks down into little islands that can’t talk to one another.”https://news.wisc.edu/researchers-deep-sleep-short-circuits-brains-grid-of-connectivity/

Related notes:

,,, zero time lag neuronal synchrony despite long conduction delays – 2008
Excerpt: Multielectrode recordings have revealed zero time lag synchronization among remote cerebral cortical areas. However, the axonal conduction delays among such distant regions can amount to several tens of milliseconds. It is still unclear which mechanism is giving rise to isochronous discharge of widely distributed neurons, despite such latencies,,,
Remarkably, synchrony of neuronal activity is not limited to short-range interactions within a cortical patch. Interareal synchronization across cortical regions including interhemispheric areas has been observed in several tasks (7, 9, 11–14).,,,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm.....MC2575223/

The Puzzling Role Of Biophotons In The Brain – Dec. 17, 2010
Excerpt: It’s certainly true that electrical activity in the brain is synchronised over distances that cannot be easily explained. Electrical signals travel too slowly to do this job, so something else must be at work.,,,
,,, It’s a big jump to assume that photons do this job.http://www.technologyreview.co.....the-brain/

In fact, besides microtubules, and directly contrary to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, quantum entanglement and/or quantum coherence is now found within molecular biology on a massive scale, i.e. in DNA, in proteins, and in other important biomolecules,,,

“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.”
Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it)https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176

Quantum coherent-like state observed in a biological protein for the first time – October 13, 2015
Excerpt: If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation (in proteins).,,,
The real-world support for Fröhlich’s theory took so long to obtain because of the technical challenges of the experiment, Katona said.https://phys.org/news/2015-10-quantum-coherent-like-state-biological-protein.html

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015
Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say.
That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.”
The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
“what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?”https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

It is also important to point out two other facts, i.e. quantum non-locality and conservation of quantum information:

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”http://www.quantumlah.org/high.....uences.php

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – 2011
Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment.http://www.physorg.com/news/20.....tally.html

The implications of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, are fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
Those pleasant implications, of course, being the fact that we now have strong physical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.

In the following video, entitled Quantum Entangled Consciousness, Stuart Hameroff states that ‘the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed., it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul’.

“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
– Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark)https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300

Verses:

Mark 8:37
Is anything worth more than your soul?

Psalm 139:13
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Of supplemental note to free will and the supposedly “random” probabilities within quantum mechanics (which Dr. Marks also touched upon in his article): In regards to that,,, in the ‘instrumentalist approach’ in quantum mechanics, Weinberg stated this, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017
Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,,
In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11
Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,,
Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,http://www.nybooks.com/article.....mechanics/

To expand a bit on Steven Weinberg’s comment, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, “In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017
Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,,
In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11
Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,,
Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,http://www.nybooks.com/article.....mechanics/

It is interesting to note that Weinberg, an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because of free will, i.e precisely because pf the fact that “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” instead of humans being the result of physical laws as Darwin envisioned.

Yet, unfortunately for Weinberg’s philosophical druthers, science could care less how atheists, or anybody else, would prefer the universe to behave. The reality of free will within quantum mechanics has now, as of 2018, been born out experimentally.

Specifically, advances in quantum mechanics, with Contexuality and/or the Kochen-Speckter Theorem, now confirm the reality of free will within quantum mechanics.

In Kochen-Speckter Theorem we find, as leading experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Anton Zeilinger –
Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

And with contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation” and “Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. ”

Contextuality is ‘magic ingredient’ for quantum computing – June 11, 2012
Excerpt: Contextuality was first recognized as a feature of quantum theory almost 50 years ago. The theory showed that it was impossible to explain measurements on quantum systems in the same way as classical systems.
In the classical world, measurements simply reveal properties that the system had, such as colour, prior to the measurement. In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation.
Imagine turning over a playing card. It will be either a red suit or a black suit – a two-outcome measurement. Now imagine nine playing cards laid out in a grid with three rows and three columns. Quantum mechanics predicts something that seems contradictory – there must be an even number of red cards in every row and an odd number of red cards in every column. Try to draw a grid that obeys these rules and you will find it impossible. It’s because quantum measurements cannot be interpreted as merely revealing a pre-existing property in the same way that flipping a card reveals a red or black suit.
Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment.
Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. That’s part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics.http://phys.org/news/2014-06-w.....antum.html

On top of all that, the final, what has been termed, ‘free will loophole’ has, for all practical purposes, been closed:

Specifically, the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that the “physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting” and that “a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure”,,,

Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014
Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics.
“It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?”https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm

,,, that “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility, (which is exactly the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that atheists hold to be true), has now been, for all practical purposes, closed.

Anton Zeilinger and company have now pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago using quasars to determine measurement settings.

Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018
Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today.https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test from the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a physical randomizer determine measurement settings.

Challenging local realism with human choices – A. Zeilinger – 20 May 2018
Abstract: A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings. While technology can perfect the first two of these, and while technological randomness sources enable device-independent protocols based on Bell inequality violation, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human free will could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ~100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on the 30 Nov. 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole, gamification of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science.https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04431

As well, free will is deeply associated with the creation of information

As Douglas Robertson states, “Creating new axioms and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomenon: the creation of new information.
“… no operation performed by a computer can create new information.”

Algorithmic Information Theory, Free Will and the Turing Test – Douglas G. Robertson – 1999
Excerpt: Chaitin’s Algorithmic Information Theory shows that information is conserved under formal mathematical operations and, equivalently, under computer operations. This conservation law puts a new perspective on many familiar problems related to artificial intelligence. For example, the famous “Turing test” for artificial intelligence could be defeated by simply asking for a new axiom in mathematics. Human mathematicians are able to create axioms, but a computer program cannot do this without violating information conservation. Creating new axioms and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomenon: the creation of new information.
“… no operation performed by a computer can create new information.”http://cires.colorado.edu/~dou...../info8.pdf

Of related interest to all this is the relation between free will, (i.e. intentionality of thought), and teleology, (i.e. goal direct purpose), within the universe,

Teleology and the Mind – Michael Egnor – August 16, 2016
Excerpt: From the hylemorphic perspective, there is an intimate link between the mind and teleology. The 19th-century philosopher Franz Brentano pointed out that the hallmark of the mind is that it is directed to something other than itself. That is, the mind has intentionality, which is the ability of a mental process to be about something, rather than to just be itself. Physical processes alone (understood without teleology) are not inherently about things. The mind is always about things. Stated another way, physical processes (understood without teleology) have no purpose. Mental processes always have purpose. In fact, purpose (aboutness-intentionality-teleology) is what defines the mind. And we see the same purpose (aboutness-intentionality-teleology) in nature.
Intentionality is a form of teleology. Both intentionality and teleology are goal-directedness — intentionality is directedness in thought, and teleology is directedness in nature. Mind and teleology are both manifestations of purpose in nature. The mind is, within nature, the same kind of process that directs nature.
In this sense, eliminative materialism is necessary if a materialist is to maintain a non-teleological Darwinian metaphysical perspective. It is purpose that must be denied in order to deny design in nature. So the mind, as well as teleology, must be denied. Eliminative materialism is just Darwinian metaphysics carried to its logical end and applied to man. If there is no teleology, there is no intentionality, and there is no purpose in nature nor in man’s thoughts.
The link between intentionality and teleology, and the undeniability of teleology, is even more clear if we consider our inescapable belief that other people have minds. The inference that other people have minds based on their purposeful (intentional-teleological) behavior, which is obviously correct and is essential to living a sane life, can be applied to our understanding of nature as well. Just as we know that other people have purposes (intentionality), we know just as certainly that nature has purposes (teleology). In a sense, intelligent design is the recognition of the same purpose-teleology-intentionality in nature that we recognize in ourselves and others.
Teleology and intentionality are certainly the inferences to be drawn from the obvious purposeful arrangement of parts in nature, but I (as a loyal Thomist!) believe that teleology and intentionality are manifest in an even more fundamental way in nature. Any goal-directed natural change is teleological, even if purpose and arrangement of parts is not clearly manifest. The behavior of a single electron orbiting a proton is teleological, because the motion of the electron hews to specific ends (according to quantum mechanics). A pencil falling to the floor behaves teleologically (it does not fall up, or burst into flame, etc.). Purposeful arrangement of parts is teleology on an even more sophisticated scale, but teleology exists in even the most basic processes in nature. Physics is no less teleological than biology.https://evolutionnews.org/2016/08/teleology_and_t/

As a Christian, I would be very remiss in my duties if I failed to hash out the fairly profound implications of all this.

Having the reality of free will empirically validated by quantum mechanics to such a deep level has some fairly profound implications.

First, by allowing agent causality back into the picture of modern physics, as quantum physics itself now demands, and as the Christian founders of modern physics originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then a empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

The absorbed energy in the Shroud body image formation appears as contributed by discrete (quantum) values – Giovanni Fazio, Giuseppe Mandaglio – 2008
Excerpt: This result means that the optical density distribution,, can not be attributed at the absorbed energy described in the framework of the classical physics model. It is, in fact, necessary to hypothesize a absorption by discrete values of the energy where the ‘quantum’ is equal to the one necessary to yellow one fibril.http://cab.unime.it/journals/i.....802004/271

Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016
Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”.
‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”.
Comment
The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.http://www.predatormastersforu.....er=3014106

Particle Radiation from the Body – July 2012 – M. Antonacci, A. C. Lind
Excerpt: The Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same amount of intensity, independent of any pressure or weight from the body. The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image. Radiation coming from the body would not only explain this feature, but also the left/right and light/dark reversals found on the cloth’s frontal and dorsal body images.http://www.academicjournals.or.....onacci.pdf

Besides the reality of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there is also another fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well.

Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

And exactly as would be a priori expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:

Again, the implications for individual humans are fairly drastic, i.e. eternal life with God or eternal death/hell apart from God

Verse:

Deuteronomy 30:19-20
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead once again for atheists to reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of death.

John 5:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Luke 16
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

@BA77 fascinating article about the Turin shroud, that the charring was instantaneously produced by an energy source beyond any feasible technology we possess.

It isn’t clear to me how quantum information can be a soul. Presumably quantum information is all over the place, so wouldn’t quantum information = soul imply pantheism? It also isn’t clear how quantum information creates new information, as you point out is required by free will.

It isn’t clear to me how quantum information can be a soul. Presumably quantum information is all over the place, so wouldn’t quantum information = soul imply pantheism?

First, quantum entanglement can be used as a ‘quantum information channel’,,,

Quantum Entanglement and Information
Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”http://www.quantumlah.org/high.....uences.php

Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016
Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought.
In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”.
A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.http://phys.org/news/2016-08-q.....ation.html

In fact, “the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, (such as what we have in quantum biology), the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles.”

Physicists find extreme violation of local realism in quantum hypergraph states – Lisa Zyga – March 4, 2016
Excerpt: Many quantum technologies rely on quantum states that violate local realism, which means that they either violate locality (such as when entangled particles influence each other from far away) or realism (the assumption that quantum states have well-defined properties, independent of measurement), or possibly both. Violation of local realism is one of the many counterintuitive, yet experimentally supported, characteristics of the quantum world.
Determining whether or not multiparticle quantum states violate local realism can be challenging. Now in a new paper, physicists have shown that a large family of multiparticle quantum states called hypergraph states violates local realism in many ways. The results suggest that these states may serve as useful resources for quantum technologies, such as quantum computers and detecting gravitational waves.,,,
The physicists also showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles. In addition, even if a quantum hypergraph state loses one of its particles, it continues to violate local realism. This robustness to particle loss is in stark contrast to other types of quantum states, which no longer violate local realism if they lose a particle. This property is particularly appealing for applications, since it might allow for more noise in experiments.http://phys.org/news/2016-03-p.....alism.html

Third, Pantheism identifies God with the universe,

pan·the·ism
/?panTH??iz?m/
noun
1.
a doctrine that identifies God with the universe,,,

Simply put, atheists and pantheists, (such as Hameroff), have no beyond space-time, matter energy, cause, i.e. nothing beyond the universe, to appeal to in order to explain quantum entailment/information. Whereas I, as a Christian, do.

Colossians 1:17
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

EricMH you also state:

It also isn’t clear how quantum information creates new information, as you point out is required by free will.

I never claimed that quantum information creates new information. I don’t know where you got that idea from.